Stencil-printing on Mica Tiles

Back in mid-2016, I decided to try a "new" substrate.

From an online vendor, I ordered sheets of mica, a translucent mineral that comes in thin layers (and can be split into even thinner layers.)  Mica lends itself to many delightful artsy uses.  It arrives looking like this:

Mica can be cut with scissors to form any shape you want.  It has a slick surface that accepts acrylic paint as well as some markers -- the marker I've used is the IDenti Pen permanent marker by Sakura.  

These tiles can be layered over paper or any other surface, using a clear-drying adhesive such as gloss gel -- it takes only a small dot or two of the gel, and in fact it's better to use a couple of dots rather than to spread the gel across the entire piece of mica.

Because it's flat, mica can be used for layered art that will fit smoothly onto the pages of an art journal.  But, because it's also rigid, it can be used on a journal cover as 3D art, supported underneath by 3D pop-up glue dots. 

My only caution is that, despite it being a mineral, its splitting quality sometimes makes it a little fragile around the edges of each piece.  The more the sheets are split apart, the more fragile they become.  When they first arrive, they are thickly layered, with barely any fragility.  But I end up splitting my tiles, to make them more translucent.  And to get more bang for my buck!

Stencil-printed mica really makes a statement when used as "dangle-art."  You can punch a hole in the top of stencil-printed mica to make dangle earrings, Christmas tree ornaments and wire-linked charms for hanging in windows.    

Today I'm posting artwork made on mica with some of my stencils....



Above: Made with 9"x 12" stencil Clustered Leaves

Above: Made with 9"x 12" Clustered Leaves and 9"x 12" Loopy Ladders.

Above: Made with  Clustered Leaves

Above center:  Loopy Ladders stencil used on a piece of reflective mica

Above:  one leaf printed with the stencil Clustered Leaves (notice the translucency of the mica which lets you see part of the foil background)

Above:  one leaf from Clustered Leaves (notice the translucency of the mica which lets you see part of the background, which was created with a combination of Clustered Leaves and Loopy Ladders.)

I'm not a scrapbooker -- so, instead of showing images in a scrapbook below, I've substituted three digital art prints that I made several years ago.  On each of these three images I've used the same sheet of transparent mica, trimmed around the edges with metallic acrylic paint thru parts of my Loopy Ladders stencil.  This is to show how a piece of mica -- with its edges stencil-printed -- can be used as a frame-accent for any area of your art that you want to highlight:

Above:  Altho this is a digital art print, I used the same silhouette in designing my 6" x 6" stencil Heron.  You can click on the above image to enlarge it and better see details.

Today's featured stencils look like this:

Loopy Ladders (9"x 12")

Clustered Leaves (9"x 12")

Thanks for visiting!  To scroll thru the pages of my StencilGirl stencils and masks, please start here.